Boris Johnson committed “repeated contempts” of Parliament with his partygate denials that merited a 90-day suspension, a cross-party investigation has found.
The Privileges Committee’s recommended suspension for acts, including deliberately misleading MPs, would have paved the way for a by-election for the former prime minister if he had not resigned in anticipation. Mr Johnson hit out at what he called a “deranged conclusion”, accusing the Tory-majority group of MPs he has repeatedly sought to disparage of lying.
He called the committee led by Labour veteran Harriet Harman “beneath contempt” and claimed its 14-month investigation had delivered “what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination”. The MPs recommended that Mr Johnson should not be given a former member’s pass, which would grant him access to the parliamentary estate.
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Before his resignation on Friday, they said they had professionally agreed a suspension long enough to potentially trigger a by-election. But they said he committed further contempts for offences including undermining the democratic processes of the Commons and being “complicit in the campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation of the committee”.
Mr Johnson quit the Commons last week after reading the report’s findings, meaning he will escape the immediate prospect of a sanction. The recommended suspension far exceeded the 10-day threshold which, if approved by the wider House of Commons, could have led to a by-election in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency.
In a lengthy statement, Boris Johnson responded to the committee's findings. He said: "It is now many months since people started to warn me about the intentions of the Privileges Committee. They told me that it was a kangaroo court.
"They told me that it was being driven relentlessly by the political agenda of Harriet Harman, and supplied with skewed legal advice – with the sole political objective of finding me guilty and expelling me from parliament.
"They also warned me that most members had already expressed prejudicial views – especially Harriet Harman – in a way that would not be tolerated in a normal legal process. Some alarmists even pointed out that the majority of the committee voted remain and they stressed that Bernard Jenkin’s personal antipathy to me was historic and well-known.
"To be frank, when I first heard these warnings, I was incredulous. When it was first proposed that there should be such an inquiry by this committee, I thought it was just some time-wasting procedural stunt by the Labour party.
"I didn’t think for one minute that a committee of MPs could find against me on the facts, and I didn’t see how any reasonable person could fail to understand what had happened.
"I knew exactly what events I had attended in Number 10. I knew what I had seen, with my own eyes, and like the current PM, I believed that these events were lawful. I believed that my participation was lawful, and required by my job; and that is indeed the implication of the exhaustive police inquiry."
The former prime minister then dubbed the committee's report as a 'deranged conclusion'. "The only exception is the June 19 2020 event, the so-called birthday party, when I and the then Chancellor Rishi Sunak were fined in circumstances that I still find puzzling (I had lunch at my desk with people I worked with every day)," he added.
"So when on Dec 1 2021 I told the House of Commons that “the guidance was followed completely” (in Number 10) I meant it. It wasn’t just what I thought: it’s what we all thought – that we were following the rules and following the guidance completely – notwithstanding the difficulties of maintaining social distancing at all times.
"The committee now says that I deliberately misled the House, and at the moment I spoke I was consciously concealing from the House my knowledge of illicit events.
"This is rubbish. It is a lie. In order to reach this deranged conclusion, the committee is obliged to say a series of things that are patently absurd, or contradicted by the facts."
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